


let this be enough

by Falcine



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Pre-Canon, rebellion shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-05
Updated: 2017-01-05
Packaged: 2018-09-15 02:31:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,890
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9214913
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Falcine/pseuds/Falcine
Summary: The first time Cassian Andor meets Princess Leia Organa, it’s in one of the million dark, wet alleyways of Coruscant.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I just need all the pre-Rogue One Rebel Alliance stories tbh. I want to read about all of Cassian's shitty missions. All of them.

The first time he meets the Princess, it’s in one of the million dark, wet alleyways of Coruscant. Cassian shakes his soaked bangs out of his eyes and scans the streets for one Leia Organa, disappeared off to who knows where yet again.  _ You know those streets best; you figure out where she is,  _ Viceroy Organa had said with a mild smile and barely contained anger. 

Cassian scoffs and slips between a couple of giggling Twi’leks, pushing his way into the crowd. Somewhere along the way he’d somehow become the go to get for exploring everything dark, crowded, and seedy, and he’s not quite sure how it happened.

Tracking Organa up until this point had been mostly a tedious string of days spent on rooftops, peering at her with a pair of outdating binoculars—Cassian had almost thought he’d have an easy time of it until she decided to slip out  _ just  _ before he planned to knock down the flimsy Coruscanti hotel door.

And now here he was, perpetually a step or two behind her as she dug deeper and deeper into the core of the city. 

_ She’s sixteen,  _ Cassian thinks and shoves a couple of droids roughly out of the way,  _ where could she possibly be going?  _

Eventually, the crowds even out, and that’s the sign that you’re really in trouble. This deep into the underworld, nobody stayed out on the streets—and for good reason. 

The pounding nightclub music and screeching laughter slowly fades from the air. Cassian takes in a sharp breath of smoke-infused, piss-scented air and slides behind a rain-slicked dumpster. Even in the underground of Coruscant, the dumpsters are made of shiny, polished, beautiful durasteel. Cleaner than any of the garbage inside, for sure, but that doesn’t mask the smell. Cassian breathes deep anyways.

From here the Princess is right in his line of sight. She’s dressed in dark enough clothing, but still unmistakable against the flickering neon just at the end of the alley. There’s some shop there, an old busted up door sunken deep into the alley wall, and Leia Organa is banging on it like this isn’t the second most dangerous place to be in in the entire goddamn planet. 

(The most dangerous place is, of course, in Galactic City, where the fucking Emperor sits.) 

Slowly, the door screeches open. Cassian reaches for his blaster.

Bail had told him to get Leia out before she’d gotten herself into something stupid, but Cassian knows the look of someone on a mission. Whatever reason Leia Organa had to be here, it was potentially a good one, and Cassian wasn’t one to let good opportunities slip by. 

He can see Organa easy and clear, but whoever’s in that door clearly doesn’t like visitors. All he can hear is something low and raspy as the guy says something, and then Organa’s clear voice, ringing out all over the alley.

“We had a deal,” she says. 

More rasping. Cassian leans out, trying to catch something of the conversation. 

Organa reaches back for something on her belt, and the stranger must’ve caught sight of that in the same moment that Cassian does because all of a sudden, two shots burn bright against the night sky. Leia falls back, touching her upper arm slightly and hissing, before hefting a sizeable blaster and firing two more shots into the same hole of a doorway. Cassian hears a thump. 

Then, the Princess reaches in and snatches something from the presumably dead stranger before shoving it in her jacket pocket and wrenching the door shut. She reaches up to push back a lock of her hair that’s fallen over her forehead and Cassian almost wants to chuckle at how childish it looks. 

He slips out from behind the dumpster. 

To her credit, she only lets out a short gasp when he slides up behind her and points his own blaster against her spine. 

“Who are you?” she asks first, hands tightening around the arm he’s got across her chest. He would bet that if she were facing him right now, she’d be glaring bright enough to burn him. As it is, he’s surprised the wall in front of them doesn’t start to simmer. 

“Luckily for you, a friend,” he mutters. There’s no time for angry teenaged princesses who think they know something of rebellion today. “What did you take from him?” 

“I’m not telling you anything,” Leia says. “Go on. Shoot me then. Isn’t that what you followed me here to do?”

“What part of ‘friend’ did you not understand?” Cassian says, then starts to pat down her pockets for whatever it was that she’d braved the Coruscanti underworld for.

Organa jumps slightly. Or at least as much as she can with his gun to her back. “Hey!” she protests. 

Cassian ignores her. Eventually, he finds a microchip, the size of his hand. The circuitry glimmers slightly against the dark night sky when Cassian turns it over in his fingers. He takes half a second to examine it before sliding into his own pocket. Whatever it was, if it was really useful, rebel leaders would figure it out. No one’s ever paid him to be the tech guy anyways.

Later, after he’s gotten to know Leia for longer, Cassian would realize that he should’ve been suspicious of the sudden silence from her end. Instead, her sudden elbow in his gut manages to make him take a step back in surprise, arm loosening just long enough for her to slip out of his grip. 

He gets a full blast of that fierce glare when she turns, pointing her ridiculous blaster at his face. 

Cassian fights the urge to roll his eyes. 

“Well?” Leia asks, all trembling bravado and sixteen year old righteous fury. “What do you have to say for yourself before I shoot you, imperial scum?” 

The first time Cassian killed a man, he hadn’t meant to. He was younger than she was now and stupider to boot, and he’d knocked a captured trooper clean across the temple with his blaster. No one told him that men die of concussive force just as well as they do blaster fire. The very next day he’d done his first info drop and gotten into a skirmish in a backwater Rhylothian bar. He’d killed two more then, and, well, counting hasn’t exactly been a priority since then. 

So. 

Cassian knows what it takes to make a killer. And Leia Organa has a stubborn jut to her chin and enough stupid bravado in her eyes that she might just do it. 

“I’m with the Alliance,” he says, shoving his blaster back in its holster. 

Leia barks a laugh. “That’s the flimsiest excuse I’ve ever heard.” 

Cassian reaches out with a hand and grabs onto the barrel of her blaster. By the time she manages to squeeze the trigger he’s already got the tip pointed behind him and a hand on her wrist. Organa winces when he presses down, but she doesn’t release the gun. Cassian stifles a heavy sigh and reaches back into his pocket and takes out the microchip. “You came here for this, didn’t you?” 

Leia doesn’t say a word. 

This time, he does sigh. He slips the chip back into her pocket slowly, deliberately. If it’s a little satisfying to see her eyebrows furrow in confusion, he doesn’t let it show on his face.

“I told you,” he says. “I’m with the Alliance. Your father sent me.”

“Right, and you ambushed me in the middle of an alleyway because you felt like it.” 

“I was proving a  _ point, _ ” Cassian says. 

Leia raises one skeptical eyebrow. 

“Look, if I was an Imperial officer who’d tracked you all the way here, your body would already be cooling on the ground and the Alliance would be down a potentially useful informant. Do you really think an Imperial officer wouldn’t have just shot you as soon as you’d gotten that chip?” 

He has to give Leia the credit of being even more paranoid than he was. Her face has relaxed into something closer to scrutiny than disbelief but her hand is still solidly on her blaster. 

Cassian leans in and mutters, “Your father told me to tell you that Sabé misses you, whatever that means.” 

At that, Leia finally frowns and slackens her grip on the blaster. Cassian waits until she’s dropped her arms entirely before handing it back to her. She holsters it behind her in a fluid movement and then stands with her hands propped up on her hips. “So why did you think it was a good idea to follow me?” 

“I intercepted about three agents who tried to trail you and report you to the Empire this week.” 

Leia’s eyes widen marginally.

“We appreciate your effort,” Cassian says, “but it’s different out here in the field than you might think.” 

Leia rolls her eyes. “If you were trying to teach me a lesson, that was a lousy way of going about it.” 

Cassian manages a slight smile at that. “Not a lesson,” he says. “Just proving a point.” 

Leia huffs.

“If it means anything, Bail told me to retrieve you as soon as I found you.”

“And?” 

“I wanted to see what you could do.” 

Leia doesn’t say anything, but she does give him a tired smile. For just a moment, she looks like an actual teenaged girl, hair falling back in front of her face. Then, the moment passes and she wipes her face blank, showing Cassian the same blank mask he sees on all rebel fighters, eventually.

It’s a start. 

“So what was on the chip?” he asks.

Leia’s eyes dart around, as if searching the alley for spies and bugs. Cassian finally smiles and nods at her. In the distance, there is a siren, wailing into the night. Somehow, the streets feel nearly quiet now, as if even the roar of Coruscant can’t compare to Leia Organa’s bright fury. 

“Let’s get back,” he finally says.

Leia gives him a nod. 

The two of them walk out of the alley together. He slips her the coordinates to where his ship is hidden in an old abandoned warehouse that’s off the city’s grid somehow, and then they go their separate ways, disappearing into the crowds like they’d never even met each other.

Still, Cassian looks up at the gleaming transparisteel buildings, shaking the grime and dirt of the underground off. It never rains long in Coruscant, but somehow it seems like he’s caught a wet spell this week. Maybe someone important from Naboo was visiting. Maybe someone just missed the freshness of rain after so many days of dry sun. Whatever it is, the shower is relaxing, and he eventually gives up on pushing back his dripping hair. 

That is what hope feels like, he decides. Leia Organa is too young to carry the rebellion on her shoulders, but Cassian doesn’t have a hard time imagining it in the future. Someday, in that nebulous future they were all too afraid to dream of. 

For now, he’ll do. For now, they’ll all do, scuttling around in the Empire’s underbelly and doing the things that no one else was willing to, if only to pave the path for someone like Leia Organa to go somewhere. It’s enough, Cassian thinks. It has to be enough. 


End file.
